The Nabis

This autumn at Frieze Masters, Waddington Custot presents a singular exhibition of paintings focused on the Nabis, a tightly knit band of fin-de-siècle Parisian painters active 1888-1900. Part of the wider Symbolist movement, and active at the dawn of Sigmund Freud's theories on the subconscious, the Nabis, or 'the Prophets', sought to elevate Impressionism by shifting its focus from perception to the realm of sensation. 

Nabi painters selected colours for their emotional weight, selecting particular hues to express emotion within a single figure and to imbue real-world scenes with deep feeling. They celebrated pattern and ornament, with intimate interior and garden scenes rendered into compositions with a flattened pictorial space and a light painterly touch. Offering a profound insight into the human experience, the work of the Nabis, seen together in this exceptional presentation, illuminates the poetry of the everyday.

Created within the Nabi period of just twelve years, the works selected for the presentation, largely sourced from private European collections, represent a rare chance to experience the works of the Nabis outside of a museum context. The stand features works by each of the seven principal Nabi artists: Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Maurice Denis (1870-1943), Paul Ranson (1864-1909), Ker-Xavier Roussel (1867-1944), Paul Sérusier (1864-1927), Félix Vallotton (1865-1925) and Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940), shown alongside works by a selected few artists in their orbit, in an acknowledgment of the wider, more collaborative nature of this group than typically recorded by art historians.